Conveyor devices of this type are employed in the form of roller-track conveyors for conveying transportation structures, for example. In the automotive industry, in particular vehicle bodies or parts thereof are transported by way of such conveyor devices between individual processing or treatment stations, such as painting stations or dryers, for example. For this purpose, the vehicle bodies or the parts thereof, respectively, are fastened to so-called transportation skids which are known per se. These transportation skids have two parallel skid runners which during transportation bear on rollers of the roller-track conveyor and which typically are disposed in pairs and, in the conveying direction, sequentially on the longitudinal profiled sections of the conveyor device. A drive unit in practice comprises a drivable roller which engages on a runner of the transportation skid. The drivable roller may be a bearing roller on which the transportation skid bears. Alternatively, the drive installation may also be configured as a friction-wheel drive and comprise a drive wheel that laterally engages on the runner of the transportation skid.
Known roller-track conveyors are assembled from individual, pre-fitted path units in which the rollers and in particular the drive installation are fixedly installed. In this case, the spacings between two drive installations are adapted such that one transportation skid always interacts with at least one drive installation such that continuous driving of the transportation structures is ensured.
The transportation structures, specifically the transportation skids, are typically adapted to the items to be conveyed, and under certain circumstances also have a length which is adapted to the items. If and when the items to be conveyed by the conveyor device then change, it may arise that available transportation skids are longer than required, and also that a plurality of items may no longer be conveyed on one transportation skid.
Nevertheless, shorter transportation skids cannot be employed in such a case, since the spacings between two drive installations then become so large that the transportation skids between two drive installations are left without contact with a drive installation, with driving then being interrupted.
Moreover, the pre-fitted path units having the fixedly installed drive installations are comparatively bulky during fitting, and require a large space already during transportation.